A GOOD APPETITE; Saving a Few Hours On a Trip Back to Colonial Times

By Melissa Clark

Published: February 14, 2007

MY friend Dave Wondrich is the proud owner of an authentic earthenware bean pot, passed down from his grandmother Virginia Harding, nee Tubbs, of Maine snowshoe manufacturing fame. The pot is squat and brown, with a deep, bulging belly meant to hold two gallons of beans, molasses and salt pork while it all simmers away, preferably above the orange embers of a wood-burning stove.

Back in her bean-baking years, Mrs. Harding, now 98, let the pot bubble overnight or all day (10 hours or so), then served the aromatic, ruddy mass of sweet beans and pork with slices of Boston brown bread. It was fortifying, bone-warming food that got a body through the New England winter. And it's the kind of dish that feels exactly right this week in New York, as an icy cold front rears its frigid head.

Not being in possession of a long line of New England ancestors, nor of a bean pot, nor even of 10 hours during which I feel comfortable leaving the oven on, I started looking for a quicker route that didn't slide out of a can called Heinz.

That's when I learned that what lies between the baked bean purists and those extolling the virtues of one of 57 varieties is very bleak indeed.

Using higher heat and a shallow dish, said one recipe, would bring the total time down to a mere five hours. Another suggested 45 minutes in a pressure cooker. While this is a viable option for calm folks who have complete faith in recipes, it's a disaster for someone like me, addicted to poking, prodding and adding pinches of this and that as I cook. Still, the allure of 45 minutes pulled strong. I could put the beans on the stove after work and they would be ready for dinner that very night instead of for breakfast the next day.

Then I remembered a dish that Dave's eminently clever wife, Karen Rush, sometimes makes when she, too, doesn't have 10 hours to wait for beans: fake cassoulet, consisting of canned white beans and prepared duck confit heated on the stove.

A eureka moment if there ever was one: Why not combine canned beans with salt pork (O.K., plain old bacon would do) and molasses and such, and simmer it on the stove? As I thought about it, I realized that, packed in their sealed pot, the beans braise rather than bake. Thus the oven is incidental to the whole process.

Given this newfound freedom, I started simmering canned beans with all kinds of seasonings, from Dave's grandmother's classic mix of rum, molasses and salt pork to his mother's midcentury innovation using curry powder to all kinds of things I had read about in books, like maple syrup, mustard, ketchup and cider vinegar.

I nixed the maple syrup as too sweet and the curry powder as too weird, but kept the mustard, ketchup and vinegar, which gave the dish depth and complexity that it would normally get from a long, slow cooking time.

I was getting closer, but there was still something lacking, a textural contrast that I craved even though it doesn't exist in real baked beans either. Still, the more I thought about my favorite cassoulet with nubbins of crunchy duck skin, the more I wanted something that could engage my teeth.

The solution was at hand: just fry some of the bacon. I did, and the savory results were gone so fast that I had to make the dish again the next day so we could pretend there were leftovers.

But this time, instead of using canned beans, I decided to cook up some dried navy beans. Although it seems more ambitious, it was actually lazier. I was already at home with the dried beans in the cupboard; the cans were three windy, ice-slicked blocks away at the store.

As good as my earlier batch was, these faked beans were phony perfection. They retained their shape and stayed slightly firmer and more toothsome than their canned counterparts. Also, as they boiled I could add onion and garlic to the cooking water, which gave them a subtly richer taste. All told, it took a little more than two hours (after soaking), which, while not exactly instant, is still a good bit quicker than 10.

1. Cover beans with water to top them by 2 inches and refrigerate overnight, or bring to boil in water to cover, cool 1 hour.
2. Drain and rinse beans. Put them in a pot. Stick whole cloves into onion halves and add to pot along with garlic and bay leaf. Cover with enough water to top them by 1 inch. Simmer beans, partly covered, until just tender, about 1 to 2 hours depending upon age and size of beans; do not overcook. Add boiling water if beans look dry during cooking; they should be surrounded by just a little liquid.
3. Remove onion, cloves, garlic (if desired) and bay leaf from pot. Stir in the salt.
4. In a small bowl, mix together ketchup, molasses, vinegar, mustard powder, Tabasco and pepper. Pour mixture into beans and stir well. Add a slice of bacon to pot and bring everything to a simmer. Let simmer over low heat until beans are thickened, about 30 to 45 minutes. Remove bacon slice, if desired. Season with more salt if needed.
5. Just before serving, reheat beans, if necessary. Fry remaining bacon in large skillet and drain on paper-towel-lined plate. Transfer beans to heated gratin dish or baking pan and top with bacon and red onion. Serve hot.

Yield: 4 servings.

Note: You can substitute three 15-ounce cans of white beans, if desired. Put them, with their liquid, in a pot and simmer with the ketchup, molasses, vinegar, mustard, Tabasco, pepper and bacon as directed in Step 4. Serve as above.

Photo: A SHORTCUT WITHOUT SACRIFICE -- A pot of beans with bacon, made on the stove in a bit more than two hours, not the traditional 10. (Photo by Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times)